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From microscopic robots that can carry and deliver drugs inside the human body to tiny particles that can detect and break down microplastics, an emerging field called active matter is looking toward the microscale to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

The world was mesmerized by Colossal Biosciences’ recent announcement that they had cloned dire wolf pups, a species of canine that’s been extinct for more than 10,000 years. While experts have debated the “de-extinction” of these wolves, which are far more genetically similar to living grey wolf than to the original dire wolf, one thing is certainly true: An undergraduate student at Penn State recently catalogued a jawbone from one of Pennsylvania’s few dire wolf fossils. 

The Penn State Department of Geography will conclude its spring 2025 Coffee Hour lecture series with a talk by Jessica Omukuti, senior research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Science, Innovation and Society and Oxford Net Zero. 

Night at the Museums — a biannual event that offers students, faculty, staff and the local community an opportunity to explore free of charge various campus museums and galleries during extended evening hours — will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. on May 1 at the University Park campus.

The 2025 Richard E. Tressler Lecture in Materials will be held at 3:05 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, in 101 Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building on the Penn State University Park campus. Faisal Mohammed Al-Faqeer, senior vice president of liquids to chemicals at Saudi Aramco, will deliver the lecture, “Oil and Gas Sector: Cutting-Edge Advanced Materials for Sustainable Energy.”

To protect against rising sea levels in a warming world, coastal cities typically follow a standard playbook with various protective infrastructure options. For example, a seawall could be designed based on the latest climate projections, with the city officials then computing its cost-benefit ratio and proceeding to build, accordingly.

For some pressing research problems, an ocean’s worth of distance isn’t enough to prevent the connection to some common ground. That’s the point behind the annual National Academies U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Symposium. And it’s why the College of Earth and Minerals Sciences (EMS) joined Google, the Gates and Rutter Foundations, the Department of Defense and others as sponsors of the event.

As an undergraduate student at Penn State, Olivia DiPrinzio discovered a passion for sustainability and pursued it to help transform the University’s approach to sustainability education. 

Andrew Waxman, assistant professor of economics and public policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, will give the talk, “Paying at the Pump and the Ballot Box: Electoral Penalties of Motor Fuels Taxes” at noon on Wednesday, April 23, in 157 Hosler Building on the University Park campus.

The Materials Research Institute (MRI) at Penn State has announced the recipients of the 2025 Interdisciplinary Seed Grants and Transdisciplinary Teaming Initiative awards, designed to support collaborative, high-risk research with the potential for significant societal and technological impact.